Pit stop!
At 15:30 this afternoon, Gitana 11, currently third out of the fleet of multihulls on the Transat Jacques Vabre, reached Puerto de la Luz on Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, for a express stop lasting scarcely 2 hours. The Gitana Team's technical staff were waiting there to change the boat's starboard foil, which was lost in the early morning of Tuesday 6 November.

The work involved consisted of removing the foil stub lodged in the float and replacing it with the spare foil. Olivier Wroczynski, William Fabulet and Sébastien Thetiot did not hang about… they were waiting for the boat, ready to intervene without delay. These seamless logistics enabled Gitana 11 to get back on her way at 17:15, by which time the ORMA fleet's current leader Franck Cammas was just over 100 miles away from Gran Canaria.

Lionel Lemonchois, skipper of Gitana 11, at 17:00:The foil's been changed and we're leaving in 20 minutes time. It all went well, with no complications. The technical lads saw to that. It was like being in a Formula 1 paddock, except that we're in the middle of the ocean and they had to be very reactive, as up until yesterday, we were still supposed to be stopping in Madeira, not Gran Canaria. The aim now is to make up the time we've lost on the fleet' leaders, with a boat back to its full potential! We're up for it and back in the race more than ever!

These technical stops are authorised by the race rules and the competitors are not penalised in any way on top of the stop itself. The race committee must, however, be informed of the boat's decision and give its prior approval, as was the case here.

The weather to come by Sylvain Mondon (Météo France), Gitana 11's router:

The idea is to get back going as fast as possible in the hours after leaving Gran Canaria, by catching the trade wind originating in the south of the archipelago. The boat will keep changing tack while trying to remain in the windiest areas. After this stop, she has roughly 6 hours to make up on Groupama, which is more or less as expected.  There are two thirds of the race still to go, so it's game on!”

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